Skip to main content
Go to the home page of the European Commission (opens in new window)
English en
CORDIS - EU research results
CORDIS
Content archived on 2022-12-23

Basic and applied research on closed man-made ecological systems

Objective



Closed man-made ecosystems (CES) are laboratory-constructed ecological systems with well defined parameters which are more or less sealed from the natural environment and which are valuable tools for basic ecosystem research, offering the possibility of comprehensive analysis of clearly defined ecosystems which can contribute to the better understanding of the much more complex natural ones. They may be developed to production systems which can be linked to life-support systems for terrestrial extreme biotope habitats.

Moreover, they can contribute to innovative approaches for food production, atmosphere and water regeneration for commercial utilisation. CES for higher plants and algae are well established in research and the Krasnoyarsk Institute of Biophysics (IBP) demonstrated with the BIOS-3 system the possibility of maintaining three humans in a closed environment with local life support on the base of higher plants solely or in combination with microalgae.

CES research with animals is scarce. The Bochum and Moscow groups have developed aquatic CES which have been successfully tested for more than 14 days and the CCEO created a closed equilibrated biological aquatic system CEBAS with fishes and higher plants. The IMBP aquatic system is still a dead-end system because of its limited life-span. The CEBAS system is only a partial CES because of the import of fish food. The BIOS system is only able to produce plant biomass part of which is not edible for humans.

There are four main scientific targets: to study the turnover of basic biogenic elements in a closed ecosystem to determine conditions of closure for aquatic ecosystems of different degrees of complexity and find ways to control turnover intensity; to use theoretical and experimental evidence to determine conditions for existence of a self-sustained closed ecosystem based on algal-bacterial community, including fish. Up-to-date equipment to cultivate algal-bacterial communities available at IBP and fish-maintaining modules available at IMBP as well as experience to integrate experimentally different trophic levels form the basis to create a three-component algae-bacteria-fish system with maximum closure. Introduction of the three-component artificial ecosystem into BIOS can be optimised both to produce animal protein and to regenerate water and atmosphere.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.

This project has not yet been classified with EuroSciVoc.
Be the first one to suggest relevant scientific fields and help us improve our classification service

You need to log in or register to use this function

Programme(s)

Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.

Topic(s)

Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.

Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

Data not available

Funding Scheme

Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.

Data not available

Coordinator

Ruhr-Universität Bochum
EU contribution
No data
Address
Universitätsstraße 150
44780 Bochum
Germany

See on map

Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

No data

Participants (2)

My booklet 0 0